


White Lie

by redeem147



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redeem147/pseuds/redeem147
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Better not to love, or at least not to admit it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Lie

Honesty was not the best policy. She couldn’t fool herself into thinking that the lie would’t hurt. She knew better than that. It was cutting both of them to the quick. But she knew the lie was the better choice. Better than the alternative.

 

She had told Angel she would love him forever. She meant it, at the time, with all her heart. A part of her still loved him. But when they met, in that little place between Sunnydale and Los Angeles, met when she was impossibly back, she knew deep in her heart that she wasn’t in love with him. That the thing that had been once most precious to her was gone. That was the forever. She would always be grateful to him. In a very real way he had made her a woman. No, not the night she lost her virginity. The night she’d stabbed him in the heart.

 

She’d blurted it out once to Riley, during the act, when she thought it was a good idea for him to hear it. She’d known it was a mistake almost immediately. His face grew so hopeful. She couldn’t take it back, but she thought he knew it wasn’t the truth. She’d never said it again. He never mentioned it.

 

So it was for the best that she told Spike she didn’t love him. Couldn’t love him. It would never have worked, not in the long run. The gap was miles between them. They were both damaged goods. If she had told him the truth, he would have held on to it and never let it go. As it was, him believing despite her words had almost destroyed them both. For a moment, standing in the bathroom, she had meant it when she said she could never love him. For a moment, all she felt was hatred and disgust. But only for a moment.

 

It was for the best. He was gone now. She’d made the right decision. If they’d kept going, it would have slipped out, some time during the passion, or the hazy afterglow.

 

He was gone. It was over, just the way she wanted. And it hurt like hell.


End file.
